Our Politics Are About To Get Much, Much Worse

Last week, prosecutors for the Southern District of New York and Special Counsel Robert Mueller delivered their sentencing recommendations regarding former counsel for President Donald Trump, Michael Cohen. As previously reported by The Federalist Pages, their memos provided no significant evidence against the President.

Specifically, and to the most direct point, the sentencing recommendations did not add any information regarding claims of Russian collusion on the part of President Trump, which is the original directive to the Mueller investigation, nor do they suggest that there was any sign of obstruction of justice on the part of the President. But they abound in politics.

What the memo did mention for the first time is an allegation of possible campaign finance violations on the part of then-candidate Trump. This focus represents a whole new direction for investigators, one that was not previously contemplated. The charge of campaign financing violations, based on money paid to Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal, is based on the claim that Cohen was directed to make the payments that would eventually reach the two women by the President himself.

This renewed investigative direction has sent the pundits of politics ablaze regarding potential prosecutorial scenarios for President Trump. Never mind that the bar for successful prosecution is very high, or that the allegation is presently only based on statements made by Cohen (amongst the most discredited and conflicted witnesses imaginable), or even that then-candidate Trump likely had a legally defensible position for having engaged in the agreements with Daniels and McDougal during his campaign without a requirement that the money be channeled through his campaign accounts.

Those issues are immaterial because what is truly at stake is the opportunity to take down a sitting president hated and feared by Democrats, the press and the establishment.

The Democrats, who are on the eve of taking control of the House of Representatives, have made it their goal to make Trump their greatest nemesis. Like the relentless quest for the Holy Grail, Democrats would take no greater joy during the next two years than to 1) stop every one of Trump’s agenda items; and 2) get him out of power. If they can exploit any opportunity to embarrass the President and demonize him, they will. It’s all pure politics.

As evidence for this point, we have Congressman Adam Schiff, the likely incoming House Intelligence Chairman, who almost giddily said on Face The Nation, there’s a real possibility that “on the day Donald Trump leaves office, the Justice Department may indict him.”

This is more than a mere concern on Schiff’s part; it is an agenda item.

In the face of these developments and associated chants, the road before the nation becomes distinctly clear. First, the Democrats in the House of Representatives will do everything in their power to obstruct anything of importance that President Trump wishes to accomplish. For them, Trump is an illegitimate President, one that had no right to defeat Hillary Clinton in the first place.

Second, to this day, they cannot come to grips with the harsh reality that President Trump won not because of Russian collusion, but rather because he ran a great campaign concentrating on seeking electoral college votes and because Hillary Clinton was the worst candidate the Democrats could have proffered.

Third, and even more demoralizing to Democrats, is that President Trump has accomplished more in two years than Obama accomplish in two terms. From his conservative appointments to the courts, to the scaling down of taxes, to the overt demonstration of the futility and oppressiveness of the Paris Climate Accord, to the takedown of ISIS and the jump start of the economy, Democrats have been unable to deal with Trump’s effectiveness and the furtherance of the national stability his agenda has provided.

These realities coupled with the virtual dissolution of the Russian collusion allegations have left the Democrats desperate for a talking point and no greater talking point exists than the involvement of the President in an extra-marital, immoral sex scandal with legal overtones — whether they are real or not. That’s good politics for Democrats.

All this leaves us with a recipe for a totally fruitless and unproductive two-year cycle save for the promotion of greater discord among Americans and the continuance and amplification of fractioning among countrymen.

And that is going to make for a very long and painful haul to the 2020 elections for everyone.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in The Revolutionary Act. The featured photo is by Brian Wertheim on Unsplash.

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